Stephanie Shanks wrote a beautiful description of her project to facilitate the making of artwork in anticipation of Christmas during the Advent season.

"What if art was just a way of turning prayers inside out, to be seen and shared?
The Advent Art Project is a collection of “visible prayers” gathered
from the church and displayed on the walls of our building to encourage
each other and prepare our hearts for Christmas." -Stephanie Shanks

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Between working on commission pieces clients will be giving as Christmas gifts (hence the lack of artwork on the blog) I started a series of digital collages inspired by the Advent sermon series at my church.

Back in 2008 I illustrated Psalm 139 by means of digital collage and have been wanting to create more ever since. See a selection of the collages here: Psalm 139

The first sermon of the series was a beautiful exposition of Psalm 2: Christ, as King over the nations of the earth. Listen to the sermon here.

Below are my interpretations of the Psalm, with the key text of the Psalm included in the collage.

Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the Lord and against his Anointed...Then he will speak to them in his wrath,and terrify them in his fury...

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

I believe it was the beginning of October that I noticed the first Christmas decorations out in the stores. Earlier and earlier every year, I'm telling you folks. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas & all the hype leading up to it. All I'm saying is to let the pumpkins and fall foliage have their fair share.

Here, however, was a good 'n' proper opportunity to blast a the Christmas tunes a few months early.

A client (and now turned friend) commissioned me to paint a few scenes of her hometown, McAdenville, NC, a.k.a Christmas Town USA. Every December the small town outside Charlotte is decked for the holidays in white, red and green lights. This is what Wikipedia has to say about McAdenville:

The lights attract visitors from all over the country and is one of the
biggest light shows in the US. Begun in 1956 with the assistance of Pharr Yarns,
the largest employer and land owner in the town, many trees and
buildings in the town are covered in Christmas lights and some form of
decoration. More than 300,000 vehicles visit each year.[4]
The lights are entirely maintained by volunteers from the community,
and no admission is charged. Pharr Yarns picks up the electric bill for
the event.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

We packed up everything we own, which wasn't that much, since we were moving from a one bedroom condo.

We closed on our big beautiful house.

Had our first house guests.

Emptied our moving truck into our new home!

I would definitely call this house a cleaner-upper, as opposed to a fixer-upper. It's got good bones, but quite a bit of grime had settled over the years. According to the neighbors there were 6 cats living in the house before the previous owner passed away. We found one of them behind the oven.

We replaced all the appliances, some of which we were expecting to replace. Others, after using once or twice we didn't feel they were particularly safe.

Other things, like reclaiming the driveway from the overgrown bushes, replacing wax seals, leaking faucets, getting rid of the mother of all yellow jackets nests, repairing screens from the porch, painting the ceilings, wall & trim for the (very likely) first time since the house was first constructed, replacing all the light bulbs with compact fluorescent (one of the many joys of having a husband who works for the power company)

Yeah, I knew you wanted to see that last one. ;)

And what post would be complete without a photo of Mr. Theo in his new sunny spot.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

This commission appeared on my newsletter at the beginning of the month. This piece has to be one of my favorite commissions of all time. I had a low dpi reference photo, which can make things difficult but with the graphic nature of this piece plus those dazzling deep blues, this piece, while challenging, was quite fun and gratifying.

Below are the step by step photos of the creation of this painting.

1. Before beginning the final piece I completed a loose 6x8" study painting and sent to the client for approval:

2. All elements are penciled in, then the first layers of the background are applied.

3. The first layers of the snow in the foreground are begun below:

A shot of how I set up to paint from the study:

5. More layers added to the sky, background and snow, figures and gear are painted in as well.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Gunny was a 8 month old Yorkie I met on the beach in Nags Head this summer, filled with wonder and adored by his owners. His owners asked me to paint a piece of Gunny on the beach. These were two of my study paintings from the brainstorming process. It was too cute not to share on the blog.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Last week my parents rented a beach house & invited the family for our 3rd annual beach vacation.

We did some biking, some sunset watching and of course a lot of swimming.

I brought my painting gear. I have a whole new respect for those everyday beach plein air painters. I got more sand in my palette and on my paintings than I thought possible. My painting almost blew away once when I was packing up to leave. I think I even got a little sea sick while painting (on solid ground -- the beach) at Jockey's Ridge one particularly gusty day. Someone said the wind was in the middle 20's mph.

Despite all that painting on the beach, battling the wind and the sand beats painting in the studio any day! Below are a few of my favorites from the week. (Most of the sand has been scrapped off the paintings & a few touch-ups were made once I returned home.)